Drowning Man
by The Queen of All Cosmos
Summary: Finnick takes on more clients. Back home, Annie deteriorates. Commission for Joanne Watson.


**"Would you be willing to write about Finnick taking care of Annie? Just every day, slice of life stuff. Or maybe what he's thinking about when the Capitol sells his body?"**

He doesn't know how, but he's floating on the ocean. A vast sea of coruscating blue, styled in sequins by the sun, flashes and shimmers all around him; each wave laps at his palms and the backs of his knees like the tongue of a faithful companion, sloping up beneath him as he slides down into one trough after another. Finnick opens his eyes and gazes up into the sky. It's just another sea, far above his head, where schools of birds wheel on unseen currents.

His head turns, because he senses suddenly there is someone waiting for him back at shore.

But Finnick Odair awakens, and he is not in District 4. He is in another bedroom in the Capitol, lying beside a woman old enough to be his mother. The woman is propped up on her forearm, watching him, but Finnick still feels lost at sea.

"Isn't this more pleasant?" In half-sleep, he can't remember his client's name. "You had so many nightmares before. It's called a 'water bed'. I want you to feel at home, Finnick, when you're here with me. Who needs that nasty little district when I can give you the ocean?"

He says something empty, some recycled compliment or witticism, and he can tell by her face she is charmed. He can tell by the way she rolls over on top of him that he's gotten too good at this game.

He closes his eyes and thinks about the one waiting for him. He thinks about the last time he saw her, the last things that were said. In his mind he sees Annie and he knows he can do this, just once more. He sees Annie.

He finds her on the beach. He drops everything and runs when he sees her crouched over at the waterline, her head completely submerged with her hair spreading out around her like seaweed. He yanks her up sharply by her arm and hauls her to her feet, spluttering. The soothing words he had prepared for her on the train ride over fly from his mind.

"Annie, stop it!"

She hasn't gone near open water since her own Games, but this doesn't feel like progress. Finnick pulls her around to face him and secures her head between his hands. Dark hair plasters her pale face like black fissures in porcelain, shattering its perfection. "That water is real, Annie. I'm real. I'm here now, everything is going to be all right again."

"Do you think I don't know?" Her head wobbles between his hands as if her neck can't support it properly, but Finnick's heart is soaring, because _here_ is the old Annie again, glaring at him with anger so sharp it hones her concentration. When the expression can't hold itself and crumbles, so does his hope. _"Do you think I don't know?"_ It's almost a shriek.

"Annie, _listen to me._" He claws at her like desperate man now; his fingers curl around the roots of her hair, and if she wasn't shaking already he knows he would be shaking her. But he doesn't know why she should listen. What can he say? There is nothing, nothing to absolve him of the guilt. Of course she knows. There is no disguising what his life has become. Having her was enough for him, but how dare he expect the same to be true for her when he gave himself away at every opportunity—?

"You're killing yourself!" his only love howls suddenly. "You're killing yourself for me! Stop _dying_ for me, Finnick! You told me not to die for you! I wanted to die in that arena, but I didn't! So why are you dying for me?"

"Oh, Annie."

She knows. She knows so much more than he could have anticipated, but her knowing what he cannot say only makes it worse. To anyone else, her words would seem frenzied and nonsensical, the ravings of a jealous madwoman, but to _him_, they are the words he has always hoped and feared for. She understands. She doesn't understand. How can she know so much, yet still see so little how he loves her?

Finnick carries them both to the ground. Annie cements herself to him like a limpet and he rocks her, cradling the back of her skull. But she doesn't want to be treated like an infant, she doesn't deserve to be. The only thing she has ever deserved, besides someone better for her than him, is the truth.

"I do it for you. I do it all for you. I know you can't bear to hear it, but you have to. The reason I'm gone all the time—that I go away more now than I did before—is to make you safe from them. If Finnick Odair from District Four is around to keep everyone entertained, they forget all about you, Annie. All the people from the Capitol who..." His throat closes on the words. "... who wanted to 'meet' you before, they've forgotten that's what they wanted. Because I made them forget."

Annie quakes harder in response. If Finnick thought his heart had broken a thousand times before now, over the course of a thousand different encounters in a thousand torturously creative ways, he had been wrong. He gives a shaky laugh and pulls her face back to look at her, as if he could never drink enough of it.

"So please don't cry for me anymore. Spare a drowning man, Annie."

But she doesn't. Her lips, slick with tears, capture his, and he pulls them both down.


End file.
